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Everyone has problems with Blow the Man Down...I know I did but you'll get it.

Just go really really really slow at first, making sure you hit the right notes and the right time even if it doesn't sound like a song, just make sure you hit the right notes and then the next day, when you go back to it, you'll be able to play it faster and faster.

But trust me, everyone I know in this forum had problems with that song. Just keep at it

Blow the Man Down is a rite of passage here on this forum. Everyone has trouble with it, even those who sailed through the preceeding pieces easily. It's the first piece where you really have to coordinate your two hands.

I made a photocopy of the page, and divided each measure into individual beats so I could see exactly which RH and LH notes had to be played together on each beat. That was the only way I could get it to make sense. It worked for me. If you are really stumped, try it.

Good luck! Everyone does get it eventually. I still play it from time to time just so I don't forget how to do it.

Yea, it's the first piece that seems to have differently new type spacing LH and RH parts.. It's very odd compared to what has come before. I agree with the poster a few comments up. I don't think its a very pleasant tune. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I am struggling.

I'm working on putting RH and LH together for "O Sole Mio". This one seems to be easier than "Auld Lang Syne", but harder than the previous two. I'm slowly creeping along - no more learning a song in a day or two.

I also have a short list of my favorites that I review from time to time, and I've started renewing my aquaintance with some Christmas carols. I've got enough to keep my busy, and just when I start getting bored, it's time to turn the page to a new challenge.

Stopped in for what may be my last, or close to last post in the level one thread. I'm working on Amazing Grace which is the last piece in the Adult Self Teaching version of level one. It's getting there but the pedaling is making me mess up the notes, so slow and steady she goes.

I did want to comment on Blow the Man Down. I am doing a review of the whole book along with my wrapping up the last piece and I came to BtMD. It was easier to play, and whoever said it, it still sounds like (epithet deleted) to me! That is one of the reasons, I think, that people have so much trouble with it. Even when done reasonably well, it still sounds awful.

My sugggestion, if it is really bothering you, is to get it to the OK stage and do a little more work on it after you are further into the book.

Blow the man down is a tough piece, it took me close to a week I believe to get it smoothly down. Replay the same parts over and over that you have trouble with and eventually it starts getting automatic. I still play it from time to time actually :p once you learn that Cafe Vienna, which is just a bit after that feels a bit similar as well, but easier to learn. Everyone has problems with that piece usually and I see it as one of the more challenging pieces at least for its level.

Nice to see you progress do, hopefully I can come in the book two in some months as well, can't wait at least.

Still working on chiapanecas,and I guess Auld Lang Syne I guess..feels like I'm not making any progress at all for weeks now. For Chiapanecas I can do the first page, and the half of second page rather smooth but the last 2 lines is giving me trouble, it just sounds awkward like something is wrong, maybe I'm playing something wrong. It's giving me a headache but I'm getting somewhere at least. Auld Lang Syne well its not going anywhere, its not sounding anything like it despite that I'm pretty sure I'm hitting the right keys but its hard to check that for sure, so its something like a lost case.

Oh yeah I need something cleared up, in Chiapanecas you repeat on the first page, and once in the second page. So the second time you play it, do you repeat the line with the 1, or do you jump to the second part? As in do you still repeat everything you played up to now (within the bars, not whole piece.), or do you jump over where it says 1 and right up 2. On second page it seems like play all of it again on that page, but on first page it seems a bit unclear for me.

You play the first page twice, once with ending 1 and once with ending two. Then you go to the second page and do the same, that is, once with ending 1 and then go to the top of the page again and play with ending 2. Got that? :-)

I'm still working on "Little Brown Jug", "Chiapanecas", "Auld Lang Syne", and "O Sole Mio". The first three are mostly error free, but definitely not musical or polished. "O Sole Mio" is still under construction.

I'm pretty slow, Quagles, and many people have passed me by. You probably will also, but I'm closing in on the end of the book and can't wait to be promoted to Book 2.

I am on the last couple songs, but i think Its going to be a while before i start book 2, because the songs have gotten a bit hard in my opinion. I just work a little each day on it, Singing in the Rain gave me a confidence boost... a week ago I thought I would never get it and now i can play it easily. I think when you get stuck the best thing to do is to take a break for a couple hours and then come back and try it again.. I have to agree with one of the previous posters, Blow the Man Down is not one of my favorite tunes in the book... I would say Greensleaves, Scarbourgh Fair, Almonds and Raisons are much more fun to play. You will be happy when you get to better songs. Blow the Man Down is a grind but once you get it, it will make things a lot easier for the songs comming up.

Ok, this is my second week of lessons and of general piano ownership. I have some musical background, so the first steps are coming along nicely, maybe too nicely! I brought my Alfred to lessons and the teacher (who I LOVE) figured we would just use that since I have it.

Here's the thing....just the other day I was murdering Jingle Bells (we call it the 'Jingle Dirge' around here), and today my piano teacher flips forward to When the Saints Go Marching In and announces that I am ready for that. Gulp....that's ten pages I just missed! I feel scared.

I don't want to go to fast!

Thoughts? Should I be scared and go back and 'work my way up to it?'

Or just go with it?

Anyone else do this and regret it????

BTW, he's a great teacher, I am just afraid that all my practice before lessons started have given him a false sense of my ability!

It's good to see everyone progressing! Funny, I seem to be the only one who actually likes the tune of Blow the Man Down I remember that piece being a challenge, but I was so proud of myself when I got it down that I memorized it and played it all the time (but have since forgotten, though. I'm a bad memorizer). As AC26XP put it, you'll get it eventually and wonder why you ever sweated it

LVP: I say go for When the Saints Go Marching In! I don't have my book right now so I can't check, but I don't remember any of the songs between Jingles Bells and When the Saints, so I'm sure the pieces in between aren't that big of a deal. If you're worried, try them a bit before tackling 'Saints' but I think you'd be better off concentrating on 'Saints.' And I do think it's good to challenge yourself, especially if you've got a good teacher to guide you

About me, I've reached He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. This piece has gotten me really excited since it's very near the end, and it's transposed in 3 keys. I've got it down, except that I'm terribly slow at repositioning my hands for the next key transposition - something I have to work on. I hope to get a pass on 'Scarborough Fair,' 'Raisins and Almonds,' and maybe even 'He's Got the Whole World...' from my teacher during tomorrow's lesson.

I find I'm learning pieces much faster now. I think it's due to some of the more challenging pieces my teacher assigned me. I dreaded working on them because I find them so difficult and it takes me weeks to get them sounding even halfway decent, but I think the effort paid off. Now the method book pieces seem like peanuts compared to some of my other pieces and it takes me only a couple of days to get them to a decent level (3rd day is for polishing). If only I could say the same for my recital piece that I'm working on! I'm pretty sure I'm leaping through several levels with that one but I'm determined to work on it (the pieces in Book 2 actually look much easier than my recital piece). Anyway, the recital isn't until March so I still have a lot of time.

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Finished: Alfred Bk 1 / Currently on: a bunch of pop & classical piecesWorking on: Czerny 599 and Christmas piecesResumed lessons in Jan. 2016 after 5 years of having no instrument!

marimorimo, it looks like we started to play at about the same time (Mid May for me) and are going at a similar pace. I really couldn't get excited about "He's Got the Whole World". That piece just doesn't do it for me. So I skipped for now and went right for the Entertainer. Learning right hand only and having a lot of fun with it. Still working on the Raisins and Almonds wich I liked a lot. Scarborough Fair also need a lot more work. I just can't believe I'm so near the end of the book. I'm curious, what is your recital piece? Are you going to continue with Alfred 2?

I'm still here, but just reading, not playing. Having pain again, so I started seeing a chiropractor. He thinks its my C5 disk from a car accident I was in years ago. He's asked me to lay off the piano since that seems to be my trigger, until he can get me some day to day pain relief. But he promises if I give him time, he'll have me back at the keyboard. So we'll see.

Meanwhile, I have a lesson tomorrow, that I am totally unprepared for, as I didn't want to take another break from lessons like I had to during the spring. I'm afraid my teacher will get tired of this on and off lessons, so I've skipped practice and hopefully we can work through a few things tomorrow evening.

@Kanadka: Yup we started about the same time (beginning of May for me). Actually I'm not excited about 'He's Got the Whole World..." itself, I'm excited that it's one of the last 3 pieces in the book (I never really liked that song much). 'The Entertainer' is the piece I'm looking the most forward to, but I've still got to polish some of the previous pieces so I'll probably start working on it later this week. My recital piece isn't something well-known internationally. It's a folk (children's) song from my country but the arrangement I'm working on adds a lot of oomph and pizazz so it's so much better than the original. When my teacher played it for me a couple of months ago and said it would be my recital piece, I immediately liked it because it sounded so pretty and I said I'd be so happy if I could learn to play it someday...only I didn't realize that 'someday' would come so soon!

In my initial overzealousness in learning piano, I ended up buying the whole Alfred AIO series so I'm planning to move on to Book 2. But my teacher is already assigning me pieces that are slightly more advanced, so I think Book 2 would be more for making sure I didn't miss important points. Nowadays, I think Alfred moves a tad too slow - 16th notes don't appear until Page 99 of Book 2, I wonder why that is.

@BarbVA: I'm hope you get better and get back to playing the piano soon! Do you think the pain could partly be due to tension as well? The first couple of months I was playing, I read about being relaxed and releasing tension but never put conscious effort into it (I thought I was relaxed enough). Then one day I really tried relaxing and it made a huge difference. Before, my hands would feel tingly or slightly tired after every practice session, but nowadays, they don't feel tired at all even after practicing for nearly 2 hours. It amazes me, because I can never write with a pen for more than 30 minutes without my hand getting tired. My hand also moves faster around the keyboard when relaxed. I certainly haven't lost all tension (far from it), but I think it's a step in the right direction. I also bought the book What Every Pianist Needs to Know about the Body because the relation of the body to piano playing thing fascinates me.

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Finished: Alfred Bk 1 / Currently on: a bunch of pop & classical piecesWorking on: Czerny 599 and Christmas piecesResumed lessons in Jan. 2016 after 5 years of having no instrument!

I have a lot of time to practice, but wonder best way to spend it. Right now, I work through all the pages in Alfreds up to where I am, work on scales and the latest 'problem' until I feel like I am just making thing worse. I don't know when to stop playing a piece that isn't coming together. Like, there are two bars in Jingle bells that keep eluding me. Do I play them until I get them right and then STOP there to let it sink into the brain? B/C often if I keep going after that I just mess it up.

But if I stop there, I don't have enough other stuff to keep me busy! I don't want to move forward until I master things (more or less) but my teacher has me doing that a bit.

I could do some sight reading, but I don't know how busy that will keep me, since most the music I have is over my head and I won't be able to play it up to tempo for a long, long time.

I would love to know what you think! Just spend an hour on that last bar of Jingle bells and beat it into submission?

marimorimo : thank you for your reply. I've started learning on my own on May 15th and I've just started working with a teacher. So until late August I didn't have any supplemental pieces and only played from Alfred. We haven't decided yet what to do next. I really like this forum and I'd like to continue with Alfred 2 beacuse of the people here, but we'll see. My teacher wants to wait and work with me for a while before deciding on a course of action. I don't know anyone else who's learning to play piano as an adult, so finding this forum was really great for me.

Thanks mom3, that makes it just a bit easier. Just need to manage the third line 2nd page up to speed and to put the pieces a bit better together and it should be down, just the transitions to some of the lines isn't sitting a 100%. Think ill start an early attempt on O sole mio soon as well, but it looks hard from videos, and not sure if ill be able to read the sheet music. but we'll see!

@Kanadka: One of the reasons why I want to continue with Alfred 2 as well is because of the support in this forum. My teacher says we can continue with it, but we have to work on the other assigned pieces first :gulp: The ABF forum really makes you feel less lonely being an adult beginner, doesn't it? I also don't know of anyone else learning piano as an adult.

I got a pass on Scarborough Fair and Raisins and Almonds during my lesson yesterday. Unfortunately, I still have trouble repositioning my hands during transposition changes in 'He's Got A Whole World.." so I'll have to polish that again and show my teacher next week. We started working on The Entertainer, hooray! Now that is one piece I'm really excited to learn We also studied a few more measures of my recital piece so now I have a page and 4 measures to study. I can hobble around pressing the right notes, but unfortunately the result is 180 degrees right of 'musical.' And then there's the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5 duet to work on too.

@LVP: I find that I learn best when I don't work on a single piece for an extended period of time. There's like a boiling point wherein I don't get any better playing a single piece past a number of repetitions. I either take a break and come back to the piece later, or start working on another one (I like simultaneously working on supplementary pieces for this purpose). Later when I come back to it, my playing somewhat magically improves. So if it's not coming to you after way too many times trying, don't stress too much over it and find something else to do (or play) for the meantime

@Quagles: I don't remember O Sole Mio being particularly difficult except for the last line with the arpeggio, which I'm sure you can nail down with practice. And always be on the lookout for tied notes. Good luck!

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Finished: Alfred Bk 1 / Currently on: a bunch of pop & classical piecesWorking on: Czerny 599 and Christmas piecesResumed lessons in Jan. 2016 after 5 years of having no instrument!

Me too... BTMD was the first real challenge of the book. But then something just clicks. It's kind of amazing. You'll be grunting and heaving and sweating, and then the next time you sit down it just feels a lot easier.

Good luck! I'm up to O Sole Mio, and also doing some shorter beginner pieces recommended by my new teacher. Her opinion in that the Alfred AIO moves beginners along at a very rapid pace, which is fine if you've got nerves of steel, but she has chosen to supplement my AIO with the shorter kids pieces.

And I must admit, I love the simple little melodies that are easy to master and nice to listen to.

@Marimorimo: I'm not actually sure how to play that arpeggiated note my English isn't always the best. Do I simply play them as a broken chord starting from the lowest note? Both the treble and the bass has arpeggiated chords on that last line. So do I play them both at the same time, or do I first play the left hand chord, then the right hand chord?

My theory is from what I get is that you play them both at the same time, somewhat like a broken chord playing one note by one on both hands at the same time from lowest to highest note just like a broken chord while continuing holding in each note after pressing. I haven't got to that place yet in the piece I learned up to first page, then half of 2nd page with each hand separate. But I know how terrible it is when I make mistakes, cause unlearning them is harder than learning them so everytime ill play it ill do the same mistake over and over cause i tried something wrong from the start :p

Anyways at least I finally managed to get chiapanecas perfectly down it took a while, but at the same time I've had less time each day to practice but its good to finally get it down. So then its on to finish O Sole Mio, then when I'm nearing the end of that ill start up Jericho as well maybe try Auld Lang Syne one more time and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

@Pianobeginner1: I am not sure what the 'standard' way of pedaling is, but my teacher makes me press the pedal immediately after the playing the first note. Trying to add the pedaling is tricky enough, but learning to pedal immediately after the first note, instead of at the same time I press the note, was the hardest for me. I also find myself having a lot of tension on my foot. The tension and proper positioning is still something I'm working on. As with everything about the piano, it is all mastered with practice.

@Quagles: From my understanding of your 'theory,' it seems your idea on how to do the arpeggio is correct. Check the posts a page back. Someone asked the same question before and a few people gave their opinions.

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Finished: Alfred Bk 1 / Currently on: a bunch of pop & classical piecesWorking on: Czerny 599 and Christmas piecesResumed lessons in Jan. 2016 after 5 years of having no instrument!

I'm also struggling with the pedal. I've played on a cheap digital without pedals until 2 weeks ago and now I mess up pretty badly when I try to add pedaling.

I've tried the Entertainer hands together yesterday. It's so difficult it made me laugh. I'm not ready for that yet. But like with the Blow The Man Down, I'm sure it will come, with lots and lots of practice.

I had a little breakthrough with Hanon's Aerobic Sixth. For the longest time I just couldn't get it hands together at any decent tempo and then suddenly I realised that I'm playing it effortlessly, without thinking, fast... and correct. My hands just knew what to do. It was fun. I couldn't even believe I'm playing it this fast.

I'm wondering if anyone got a tip of on some supplemental material on being better at reading sheet music? Dynamics are, the different notes, intervals etc are understandable but first of all it goes too slow. Still the biggest problem is I have a hard time to actually recognize where I'm supposed to start on the keyboard, the initial position of both hands, and I still cannot recognize which octaves I'm supposed to play at. With also being changes in octaves (unless it does say for instance 8va.

I think at this point I should be able to read other music sheets outside of the book, even above my level and have a fairly good understanding how it is supposed to be played. Should be able to read and understand, but not to play it, that is too early. But still most materials outside the book which I've looked at, you have the same notes, familiar dynamics. I'm not gonna attempt to play them until I improve but I have to get much better at understanding sheet music, cause there's obviously even some basics I'm missing.

So any alright book or even a site that could be of help of me understanding it a bit better?

Kandka I envy you for taking time to actually do the Hanon's :p I should probably devote more time to them but I don't give them much attention even if I should and only learned the very first one in the book. Playing without a pedal, then starting with pedal is pure nightmare. I'm still playing on a rather bad piano (only semi-weighted ) cause I couldn't wait to play. But decided as I bought it if I would enjoy the piano and kept playing I'd buy myself one as a christmas present from myself. So that's what I plan to do, it'll take some time to get used to it, but I don't regret it. So about..3months and ill invest in a bit improved one at least

Quagles that will be quite a Christmas present. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I'm still getting used to weighted keys, especailly on fast songs I notice that I'can't paly them as faat as I could on my old keyboard, but I'm sure it will come. And the pedal is really nice, but again on faster songs I either forget to pedal or mess up the dynamics while concentrating too hard on pedaling.

I really suck at sightreading. Leave alone pieces from different books, even Alfred's pieces that I haven't palyed for a while - if it's not in a key of C or G, I have major troube reading them. it's rally bad. I usually memorize pieces very quickly and then I play from memeroy, even if I have the music in front of me. I also try to play almost all of the songs regularly. Now that I'm working with a teacher I have some supplemental work, so I don't have as much time to spend on Alfred's. So I'm horrified that with some of the songs I worked so hard to get, if I forget some note - I can't read it. I have to stare at it for quite a while before I realize what key I am suppose to play. I was hoping it will get a little bit better by now, but it's not yet. I think I should be patient with myself. My teacher doesn't seem to be concerned by this, saying it's pretty typical and I need to give it more time before working on sight reading. And it has to be below my current level. Hard to be patient but I am. I'm sure it will come.